GIANT REDWING 159 



greater than those of the present form; it would seem that the name 

 "northern" would be more appropriate. In the same tables, arcto- 

 legus seems to have a thicker bill ihtinfortis, the so-called thick-billed 

 redwing! However, these common names are much more likely to 

 stand the test of time than are the so-called scientific names, which are 

 subject to change at the whim of any "specialist in speciation." For a 

 thorough study of the status of this subspecies the reader is referred 

 to a very enlightening paper on the subject by P. A. Taverner (1939), 

 which well illustrates the difficulty of recognizing some of these micro- 

 scopic subspecies when taken away from their breeding grounds. 



The series of redwings that we collected during the breeding season 

 in southwestern Saskatchewan proved very puzzling; they were not 

 quite typical of either jortis or arctolegus, but the measurements of 

 my birds seem to agree rather closely with those given for the latter, 

 to which form they should probably be referred. 



Spring. — As the giant redwing cannot be recognized in life, it 

 is almost impossible to trace its migration through the ranges of other 

 forms. Wetmore (1937) reports a specimen taken in Nicholas County, 

 W. Va., as late as May 11, 1936. It probably reaches the southern 

 portions of its breeding range in late February or early in March, in 

 much the same way as the eastern redwing does, the passing flocks 

 coming first and the resident birds later. Ian McT. Cowan (1939) 

 thus describes the arrival in the Peace River district in British Co- 

 lumbia: "When we reached Tupper Creek on May 6 male blackbirds 

 were abundant, seemingly defending territories and in full song. 

 Large flocks of migrating birds composed entirely of males were 

 moving through daily and it was noticed that little mixing took place 

 between the 'residents' and the migrants. * * * A very few females 

 were seen on May 9 and subsequently, but not until the 18th did the 

 females start to arrive in numbers. Just after dawn on this date a 

 flock of between twenty and thirty females came down and joined 

 the males." 



Nesting. — Although not recognized as such at the time, this was 

 undoubtedly the form of redwing we found nesting so abundantly in 

 North Dakota in all the reedy sloughs. In the large sloughs, where 

 there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nests of yellow-headed 

 blackbirds in the tall reeds in the deeper parts, we found the redwings 

 almost as common, with nests around the edges in the shorter vege- 

 tation over shallower water, and in the long grass on the borders. 



O. A. Stevens (1925), of Fargo, N. Dak., published a short paper 

 on the redwing population of a ditch that drained the marshes of the 

 Red River of the North, in which cattails and marsh grasses were 

 growing. "The early nests, which include most of them, were built 

 in last year's cat-tail stalks, from 1 to 2 feet above the water. On 



